CrowleyHead
Well-known member
False Binary. Alchemy is a Science, it's just a Science with a goal and not a path. Tubby and Pablo and Niney and Perry and all the names we can invoke were all working and building off one another as were your Reids and Coxsonnes and the various systems, labels, etc. etc. etc.King Tubby was a scientist, Lee Perry was an alchemist
As stated in the thread earlier, Scratch's neo-canonization turns him into the auteur figure which subsequently flattens the scene of any other moments of brilliance because he is so Unique a figure (and also alive, a key contrast from Tubby).
If Scratch is an all around producer, that also brings into question what his real strength was when he relies so much on a (brilliant) bandleader who kept the actual music at the heart of the record from ever getting too staid. Likewise Tubby was one of the people who took what Scratch made as incidentals and affects and enhanced them into gestures. It's the difference between a slur/stutter and a colloquial. If Scratch was the visionary people want him to be, he would be able to command people to do this and conceive of this himself, but more often than not his Jamaican collaborators found him to be a liar and a cheat. Bunny Wailer infamously called him a sellout on numerous occasions due to his dealings with Scratch. I mean the man had to have multiple comeback albums anchored by *shudders* Europeans.